Ch'ien Mu (Chinese: 錢穆; pinyin: Qián Mù; 30 July 1895 – 30 August 1990) was a Chinese historian, educator, philosopher and Confucian. He is considered to be one of the greatest historians and philosophers of 20th-century China. Ch'ien Mu ,together with Lü Simian, Chen Yinke and Chen Yuan, was known as the "Four Greatest Historians" of Modern China.

Ch'ien Mu was a descendant of the prestigious Ch'en family in Wuxi. His ancestor was said to be Ch'ien Liu (852-932 AD), who was the founder of the Wu Yue State (907-978 AD) during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period (907-979 AD). He was born in Qifang Qiao Village (七房橋; "Seven Mansions Bridge Village"), in Wusih, Kiangsu (now Wuxi, Jiangsu) Province. His biographer Jerry Dennerlien described his childhood world as the "small peasant cosmos" of rituals, festivals, and beliefs held the family system together. He received little formal modern education, but gained his knowledge on Chinese history and culture through traditional family school education and continuous self-study.[1]

He started his teaching career as a primary school teacher in his hometown when he was eighteen.

Ch'ien relocated to Taiwan in October 1967 after accepting an invitation from the President Chiang Kai-shek in response to the Hong Kong 1967 leftist riots. In 1968, he was selected as a member of the Academia Sinica, which remedied a little his lifelong regret for not being able to be elected as a member of this Institute in the first election in 1948.

He was given land in Waishuangxi in the Shilin District to build his home Sushulou (素書樓) while continuing as a freelance academic researching and giving lectures at universities in Taiwan.

Ch'ien retired from teaching in 1984. After becoming one of the three constituent colleges of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, in 1978 New Asia College inaugurated the Ch'ien Mu Lectures in his honor. [4]

On June 1, 1990 two Democratic Progressive Party politicians, Chen Shui-bian and Chou Po-lun, accused Ch'ien of occupying public land as the nature of gifting the land for Sushulou by Chiang Kai-shek to a private citizen was deemed to be illegal. Ch'ien and his wife moved out of Sushulou and relocated to a high-rise apartment in downtown Taipei City.

Ch'ien died on August 30, 1990, a little less than three months after being forced to move out of Sushulou. Many of Ch'ien's supporters condemned the practice Chen and Chou of using Ch'ien for scoring political points against the Kuomintang. Both Chen and Chou have since apologized for the damages of their accusations towards Ch'ien, and Sushulou is now the location of the Ch'ien Mu Memorial.

Ch'ien wrote extensively on Chinese classics, history and Confucian thought. Unlike many 20th-century Chinese intellectuals influenced by the New Culture Movement of the 1910s who were fundamentally skeptical of traditional Chinese thought and Confucianism, he insisted on the importance of traditional values of Chinese culture. By the time of his death in 1990, his objections to the rejection of tradition of Confucianism had gained wider credence, partly through the influence of his student at New Asia College, Yu Ying-shih.[5]

Ch'ien Mu was an extremely industrious and prolific scholar who had about 76 works published during his life, which exceeded 17 000 000 words in total. After his death, his complete works were collected and edited into 54 volumes, published in 1994 by Linking Publishing Company in Taipei. In 2011, a revised edition of his complete works was published in Beijing by Jiuzhou Publishing Company in traditional Chinese characters.

Critics of Ch'ien's ideas, such as Li Ao, tend to focus on his superficial knowledge of non-Chinese currents of thoughts when he wrote his treatises on cultural studies, and his lack of objective, scientific method-based, defense of traditional Chinese culture. Wong Young-tsu [zh] condemns Ch'ien's own bias as "19th century traditionalist" in his "A Comment on Ch'ien Mu's Treatise on Chinese Scholarships During the Qing Dynasty" (錢穆論清學史述評) for being unable to view 19th century currents of thoughts with contemporary (20th century) perspectives. It could be argued, however, the opposition is based upon the critics' support of the New Culture Movement's legacies, which Ch'ien explicitly rejected.

Another recurring theme from Ch'ien's critics, from the 1930s onwards, concerns his defense of traditional Chinese political system, headed by a monarch but with the government filled by examinations-based mandarins, as a representative form of government, as a simplistic fantasy.

In his survey, Traditional Government in Imperial China: A Critical Analysis Ch'ien describes the basic constitutive elements of China's traditional government as it evolved. He concentrates upon those dynasties he considers China's most representative: the Han, Tang, Song, Ming and Qing; and critically analyzes and compares their governmental organization, civil service examination system, taxation and defence.

Ch'ien Mu was also criticized for having invested in too many different academic fields. For example, his research on Chinese Literature was considered as "unprofessional". His work on Daoism and Zhuangzi : Zhuangzi Zuan Jian 莊子纂箋 had also drawn him criticisms for long.